I'm not agreeing with your 2 arguments because that would be true 10 years ago. Right now, if I windows wants to update, I click update, go get a glass of water and its done.

Also, you can never say you don't need more horsepower. And I'm not just talking about workstations. My dad does only internet browsing. He uses a Pentium D, 1giga worth of ram 8 year old pc. I use a 2 thousand pounds worth of PC because I need it sometimes. My 570 has trouble rendering Crysis 1 at max. It drops to 20 fps at times.

The thing is, you're arguing over your time's worth and making sure you pc works.

If you go from the lower end of the spectrum, to the higher end (my dad to workstations for example) you can see that only an extremely small amount of people have the need for Macs. Do you need a mac for your job? if you then yes, go for it. If not, then don't buy one because its a trend. Seriouly, I feel like i'm a time traveller with what I'm hearing. If this was 2000 maybe, I'd say you were right. But as it stands, windows is just as stable as os X.

What exactly do you see that makes you say that W7 takes forever to work with ? Apart from the fact that you're using an XP machine with god knows how old hardware?

Are you worried about catching viruses from windows and not getting any from macs? Not to mention that mac viruses are not as non-existant as 2000, its not so hard to handle them in windows 7 either. Hardware related, its exactly the same propability to break something. Your time? I leave my own pc running almost indefinetly, restarting it only when windows need an update. I come into the house, shake the mouse and I'm ready to go. How is that different from your apple?

What it boils down to. You are an informed user. You have your reasons to use a Mac. I'm not saying YOU shouldn't use a mac because your reasons are wrong. I'm saying the 20year old hipster who spends x amount on an macbook to sit at starbucks shouldn't buy one.

I have qualms for people using macs when they don't need it due to their price premium. Really, I might not be an comp tech guy, but I advice a large amount of people on what to buy. The number 1 question is "do you REALLY need this?". Do you need the 27" screen of an apple? If you are buying it for web browsing, you don't even need anything OS X offers. I like OS X more but I don't need it for my job? well just partition it? its illegal? How many torrents have you downloaded?

Meh, it might be me being a narrowminded person. But the next time I see that particular elec engineer guy, in the library, with his ipod nano, ipad2, macbook pro come to me and tell me he bought all of them because the "just work". tip : he uses the library computers to run solid edge because he had problems with it and his macbook. I run it on my laptop and my desktop.

2. I'm not a comp-sci major and have no idea what I'm doing when I install new hardware (but I do have a couple of comp-sci friends and my dad works on designing circuit-boards, could always ask for help).

Most CompSci has nothing to do with hardware, so being a CS major isn't really a magic, computer building bullet. Your dad sounds like an Electrical Engineer, he could probably handle it.

I'm an EEENG as well, and they don't actually teach it to us. Granted we learn about computer architecture, and almost all of my class knows how to build a pc, we weren't taught about it at any point.

knaughty wrote:We are rapidly approaching the same point for desktops. I used to buy multi-million dollar computers. That stuff is now mostly done by stuff that costs tens of thousands (cluster computing on virtual hardware on cheap-ass blades vs Super-Computers. Lose a few zeros).

I agree that we have found much more efficient methods for super computing. The big issue is that programmers are unreal lazy about making efficient software for consumer computing. If the computing resources are there, they will use them and rely on them being there even if they could have done the same thing with less resources.

As long as hardware keeps improving at a rate in tune with Moore's law, consumer programmers will continue to make programs that guzzle computer resources to match.

Programmer used to be a skill based class, now it is all just facerolling.

laterna wrote:I'm an EEENG as well, and they don't actually teach it to us. Granted we learn about computer architecture, and almost all of my class knows how to build a pc, we weren't taught about it at any point.

My point is more that in the Ven Diagram of Electrical Engineers and people who could assemble their own computer, the EE circle should be almost completely within the 'can assemble a computer' circle. Or, they should easily be able to learn it quickly. Not to insult any CS majors that are floating around here, but engineers are going to generally be of a much higher caliber techno-nerd.

What are you looking at as a discipline? VSLI, power, signal, communications?

In other news, I'm even grumpier than usual because this isn't a goddamn cold, it's double-bloody-pneumonia.

No wonder I feel so incredibly shit.

IT Security note: I do IT Security Risk Management for one of the top-10 most profitable banks in the world. Our CERT team sits one row of cubes over from me. Do not claim that Windows is "just as secure as Mac OS X" it just makes you look like a retarded Windows bigot. You can debate reasons for the enormously higher practical / real-world security of OS X vs Windows as much as you want, but the fact that there have been like, 3 OS X Worms does not it "just as bad as Windows".

Here's the real reason:

It doesn't matter that Vista is roughly as secure as OS X (which it more or less is), the problem is that half the world is still running XP and while Apple have.. 20%? of the US market they're weak in many other regions, so they're like 5-10% overall.

gibborim wrote:My point is more that in the Ven Diagram of Electrical Engineers and people who could assemble their own computer, the EE circle should be almost completely within the 'can assemble a computer' circle. Or, they should easily be able to learn it quickly.

They could also assemble a toaster from parts if they wanted to. But maybe they're not actually interested in build toasters (or PCs). Maybe they're interested in power-grids, green energy or whatever the fuck else and they simply think of their personal computer as a tool.

Apple get this. Go look at their "post-PC" marketing material.

In the 30's till the 50's people built "specials" - home-brew cars that were often amazing performers. That's how Lotus got started, as an example.

The only sort of car you can still build from bits is the descendant of the Lotus 7, and it doesn't comply with current road rules. Cars are now a "No user serviceable parts inside" device. PCs are going the same way.

Right Now:

You cannot assemble any equivalent to an Apple computer from parts, except the Mac Pro. Same specs, butt-fuck-ugly-case-with-eight-things-haning-off-it does not count as an iMac.

Many of the Intel parts are Apple exclusive - want the world's fastest desktop IO interface? Buy a Mac, no one else in the world is shipping Thunderbolt.

Also, safety in the general banking world =/= basic user safety. If someone goes out of their way to hurt my computer, having a mac is not gonna stop me, or any other end-user.

I still think you're missing my point. Entertainment business does need macs. Hence why the firm Isiz contacted said they'll supply him with a Mac when he signs up. However, whether he needs, or any user needs to buy a mac is extremely debeatable. Why would you waste money on something you do not really need? Is Isiz going to absolutely need to buy a Mac? From the reasons he showed me, not necessarily. The only critical reason is the fact that he has a few mac-only programs, which he can always run off a partitioned OS X. Whether or not it is legal, is irrelevant, simply because he is a home user. No one is EVER going to question him.

Mac Pro being cost-effective? it costs 2450 quid to build the basic one, with 3 gigabyte ram, a 4core Nehalem, 1 terra drive and a 5770. NO SCREEN (from what I saw). My 8 giga, 4core SB, 1 terra, 570, 64gb ssd machine costed nearly half of that, for more performance. And all of this to get an "apple" ?

Its pretty obvious that if you need an apple, you have to pay the premium. Its very wrong to pay the premium because you want an apple for the "looks" unless you value looks so much.

Furthermore I disagree that PC's are becoming "non-servicable parts inside". The difference between cars and PC's, is the size of usage that is going on. In most developed countries, people are using PC's for more and more hours every day, from business to entertainment. Simply due to the amount of people who use it people will always look to increase performance, make stuff cheaper etc. Also, building a computer takes 2 hours. Building a car ?

Gibborim, I'm still trying to decide my masters discipline. I would like to avoid power signal and communications and deal with the electronics side of things. Ideally, digital electronics design, silicon manufacturing etc. Unfortunately, that represents an extremely small sector of the marketshare, and I experienced it first hand earlier this year where we got practically 5 digital electronic placements requests. Although, it is considered that communications usually holds the money of the industry.

Also, you'd be suprised at the number of EEENG's who can't build a pc. Especially chinese students. The university average in marks had the students who were in exchange from a chinese university scoring about 52% average in the laboratorie and 86% average in exams, with all other students scoring an average of 75% in laboratories and 50% in exams

laterna wrote:The university average in marks had the students who were in exchange from a chinese university scoring about 52% average in the laboratorie and 86% average in exams, with all other students scoring an average of 75% in laboratories and 50% in exams

laterna wrote:Also, you'd be suprised at the number of EEENG's who can't build a pc. Especially chinese students. The university average in marks had the students who were in exchange from a chinese university scoring about 52% average in the laboratorie and 86% average in exams, with all other students scoring an average of 75% in laboratories and 50% in exams

Almost all the Chinese exchange students I interacted with were working on Math degrees. I accidentally enrolled in an "international" calc section one year. I got pretty good at deciphering heavily accented English that year. My TA used "plurse" and "minurse" as the name for literally every mathematical operation.

laterna wrote:Also, you'd be suprised at the number of EEENG's who can't build a pc. Especially chinese students. The university average in marks had the students who were in exchange from a chinese university scoring about 52% average in the laboratorie and 86% average in exams, with all other students scoring an average of 75% in laboratories and 50% in exams

Just to head off any cries of "Racism" - unless the job you're hiring someone for is "doing exams", the ability to do practical work is more important than the ability to pass exams.

Mac Pro being cost-effective? it costs 2450 quid to build the basic one, with 3 gigabyte ram, a 4core Nehalem, 1 terra drive and a 5770. NO SCREEN (from what I saw). My 8 giga, 4core SB, 1 terra, 570, 64gb ssd machine costed nearly half of that, for more performance. And all of this to get an "apple" ?

You're running a Xeon in your desktop? The price difference on the chips is big. The 2.8GHz quad-core xeon in that Mac Pro is $1229 on newegg, whereas your sandy bridge chip is more like $224 or $328 (2500k/2600k). They are also running ECC ram, which is also more expensive, and so are boards that support both of the above.

Now, whether or not a Xeon is worth the money at the moment (without going dual-core) is questionable, especially since sandy bridge is a lot newer than the socket-1366 xeon lineup the mac pros are using, is another question entirely. But your Sandy bridge desktop to a mac pro is far from a fair comparison.

How do you figure Macs are cost effective? A PC with an i5-2500k, GX560/HD6950 and 4GB DDR3 1600MHz is ~£800. A Mac with equivalent specs has three disadvantages, namely that it : a) doesn't exist; b) would cost me at least a grand more and c) includes the price of a screen that I already own. As a bonus, the cooling sucks, OSX is frankly annoying, and it has no expandability. Unless you like to do bad things to your hardware and need a PC you physically can't open to stop yourself or break Windows repeatedly (in which case an equally good solution would be to use Linux), then Macs are so much more expensive than equivalent PCs that they don't factor in.

Oh, and Thunderbolt is useless because it isn't any faster than USB 3 for practical purposes: only the very highest of high-end SSDs can actually read/write fast enough for anyone to notice a difference.

Last edited by Panzerdin on Mon Apr 04, 2011 10:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

Hot cases? Pretty sure they're designed so heat is funneled to the case to bleed it off.

Oh, and Thunderbolt is useless because it isn't any faster than USB 3 for practical purposes: only the very highest of high-end SSDs can actually read/write fast enough for anyone to notice a difference.

Thunderbolt isn't limited to disk drives and the tech demos show how it is pretty cool for what it is.

We live in a society where people born on third base constantly try to steal second, yet we expect people born with two strikes against them to hit a homerun on the first pitch.

1. I mean that the mac either runs hot or has the fans go crazy if it's doing anything demanding.2. You can store data on Hard Disks, USB Sticks, CDs, DVDs, Blu-Rays, SSDs or magnetic tape: you're still limited by the read/write speed of the storage medium you're using. SSDs are the fastest things going, and even then only the very fastest actually exceed the maximum speed of USB 3.0. Thunderbolt can be as fast as it likes, it's still limited by what it's reading from and writing to.

1. I mean that the mac either runs hot or has the fans go crazy if it's doing anything demanding.2. You can store data on Hard Disks, USB Sticks, CDs, DVDs, Blu-Rays, SSDs or magnetic tape: you're still limited by the read/write speed of the storage medium you're using. SSDs are the fastest things going, and even then only the very fastest actually exceed the maximum speed of USB 3.0. Thunderbolt can be as fast as it likes, it's still limited by what it's reading from and writing to.

1) What mac are you using? My iMac does not do that, nor does my MacBook. The loudest thing in my room is my external 2TB hard drive.2) But Thunderbolt is not limited to just file storage devices like you are implying as it can drive monitors as well as sending data to your SSD raid array and drive a docking station for various other items and being such high bandwidth all that can go on without making any other part of it worse. It is a one port to rule them all thing, basically what the original point of USB was taken up a notch.

We live in a society where people born on third base constantly try to steal second, yet we expect people born with two strikes against them to hit a homerun on the first pitch.

Panzerdin wrote:Oh, and Thunderbolt is useless because it isn't any faster than USB 3 for practical purposes: only the very highest of high-end SSDs can actually read/write fast enough for anyone to notice a difference.

Typical WinTel bigot argument.

Macs suck because they don't have BlueRay / USB3, which are awesome! Firewire and USB2 simply don't cut it!

<Apple launches ThunderBolt, which kicks the shit out of USB3>

USB3 is clearly good enough! No one needs anything faster!

Any Windows technology that Macs are missing is always critically important. Any PC technology that Apple launch first (hello, USB?) is always beyond the bleeding edge and useless.

Obviously SSDs are going to remain slow and expensive forever. I mean, it isn't like Moore's law applies to flash chips.

Are you insane or simply incapable of using this thing the rest of use refer to as "logic"? You can't claim something doesn't exist and is more expensive, you just come across like a frothing WinTel fanboi.

I am a Mac user that uses a number of VMs in Parallels (yeah I know VM Fusion is better, or so they say). This functionality is critical for my job doing QA, testing and support of the custom software that my company uses. I have to be able to test shit on the fly, and not just which browser. For example, I have currently on my LAPTOP mind you:

OSXXP SP2XP SP3VistaWin 7 32Win 7 64Ubuntu

All readily available to pull up without shutting down my host OS. If this didn't win the argument for me in my current job, 3 words for you regarding work-owned Macbooks (for musicians):

Are you insane or simply incapable of using this thing the rest of use refer to as "logic"? You can't claim something doesn't exist and is more expensive, you just come across like a frothing WinTel fanboi.

Wait, why can't Macs play Blu Ray? (Not that I would actually care about that missing feature before games start coming out on them.)

USB was a redefinition of how peripherals could and should be connected to your computer. It is highly fallacious to imply that Thunderbolt is to the rest of the field as USB was to all those monstrous pin connectors of yore. The only thing Thunderbolt is good for right now would be outputting to a 2560x1440/1600 screen and Display Port CRUSHES] Thunderbolt at that. Being an Apple exclusive is good for nobody but Apple. It stifles innovation of hardware that uses the standard because, quite frankly, it lacks market share and is guaranteed to lack that market share for at least a year.

The only logical flaw is in your head. Point b) is a perfectly fair supposition based on Apple's pricing. Also, no one has called you a Macfag, so how about you turn down the fanboy bullshit.

Panzerdin wrote:(in which case an equally good solution would be to use Linux)

If I would have to choose between Linux and OSX, OSX would win every time. Take any imagined or real level of driver issues you may experience in Windows and add in having to write the drivers yourself. I had more than enough driver writing from my assembly language classes for this lifetime.